I found a picture of a man who reminded me of my father and realised that if they looked alike, they were alike. They had the same chin, the same black hair turning streaky white, the same hairline, the same colouring. Their muscular jaw and their lips were the same. The shapes of their faces and foreheads, skin and dimples were identical. The man had a longer nose and was over six feet tall, whereas my father was five foot ten. Was William Butler Yeats really my paternal grandfather?

I looked him up on the internet. He’d had an abrupt change in his life leading to heart disease in June 1925; in the same month my grandmother had been murdered. In the library the following day I found photographs of Yeats’ Dublin, and saw for the first time a photograph of Yeats as a young man. He was the very image of my father.